Psychedelic Salon

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] "I've never met anyone with a deeper devotion to cannabis than myself." "So what you have to do is just like every other thing, everything you've been told is wrong, and you have to take life by the handlebars and figure out what's really going on, which doesn't mean that you're reckless." "We've been polluted by Disney." "We are living inside a 90% Nineteenth Century world view. And a culture cannot evolve any faster than its language evolves, because what cannot be said cannot be done. What cannot be said cannot be put in place." "So in a way, one way of thinking about psychedelics is that they empower language. It's a way to force the evolution of language. The way you stretch the envelope of culture is by creating language." "It was very important, I think, to the Establishment to suppress that [hip phrases from the Hippie culture], because new words are the beginnings of new realities." "What holds us

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] "I think, when it's all sorted out, it ALL happened in Africa. I mean, language, religion, symbolic activity, theater, all of this stuff was in place in Africa from, say, 20,000 B.C. up until around 9,000 B.C." "The African 'Cradle of Civilization', I don't even regard that as a theory. Anybody who doesn't believe that is going to have to do some fast talking." "They [16th century alchemists] were angelic magicians, is what they were." "DMT is this very short-acting hallucinogen that you smoke, but it's a neurotransmitter. It occurs in all human beings on the natch, and it occurs in various plants and animals. In terms of nature, it's the commonest of all hallucinogens. In terms of impact, it's the strongest of all hallucinogens. It's a completely reality-obliterating experience, and it comes on so quickly that you don't grok it like a drug." "The other thing about DMT that's weird is, it does not affect you

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] "Human beings are co-partners with deity in the project of being. This is the basis of all magic." "In a Christian context magic is heresy because it implies that man can command god to act. In other words that in some strange way the magician compels nature to behave as the magician desires." "The Hermetica actually refers to humanity as the brother of god. So it's a completely different attitude toward being human. It's an empowering attitude." "In the hermetical, magical view human beings are not tainted by Original Sin." "Western civilization, in a way, can be thought of as an accumulated series of misunderstandings." "Had Western Europe stayed in touch with the mystery religions of ancient Greece, Christianity would never have been able to force its agenda to the degree that it did." "Alchemy, and conjuration, and tailsmanic magic, and sympathetic magic, all of these things flourished, really, not as

Guest speaker: Jonathan Ott PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Jonathan Ott.] "It is, of course, absurd for humankind to presume to illegalize other organisms with which we share this planet." "A society that coddles murderers and armed robbers in order to get tough on potheads is not walking the moral high ground." [In reference to releasing violent criminals to make room for small-time, non-violent, simple possession offenders.] "In short, drug prohibition is impractical, ineffective, uneconomic, anti-scientific, unhealthy, immoral, unecological, undiplomatic, and dictatorial." "Drug laws are the monstrous result of institutionalizing paranoia." Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] "What I think is going on is that probably language was entertainment long before it was meaning. It's a kind of tuneless singing." "Sometime in the last 50,000 years, before 12,000 years ago, a kind of paradise came into existence, a situation in which men and women, parents and children, people and animals, human institutions and the land, all were in dynamic balance. And not in any primitive sense at all. Language was fully developed. Poetry may have been at its climax. Dance, magic, poetics, altruism, philosophy, there's no reason to think that these things were not practiced as adroitly as we practice them today. And it was under the boundary-dissolving influence of psilocybin." "All the accoutrements that distinguish us from animal existence were put in place when we had a different kind of mind than we have now. We didn't have a mind that favored role specialization, and male dominance, and anxiety over

Guest speaker: Bruce Damer PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Bruce Damer.] "The EvoGrid at home will be your computer looking for signs of emergent protolife in the primordial digital soup." "[Life-like digital processes] are significant because they show us an insight into our own beginnings. They challenge religious beliefs, creationists' beliefs, they show us that life may have emerged elsewhere in the universe in different environments. They will be, in a sense, one of the ultimate creations of the biosphere." "Perhaps Gaia, the biosphere, has a devious plan which is to allow one of its species, one of its offspring, to create a mechanism to create new forms of life." "The crescendo of human civilization really is going to be in people's minds more than on the streets. It'll be in the minds first." "The giving response that we have [when natural disasters occur], and through technology the fact that we can sort of be there virtually, and be in the environment that those people are in, an

Guest speaker: Dr. Timothy Leary PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Dr. Timothy Leary.] "Now the key thing to the human species is this: That we have not committed ourselves to an over-specialized form." "It's obvious that if any quantum leaps are going to happen in evolution it's best designed to happen in a period of adolescence." "Evolution has always involved people like us getting together as we are tonight, figuring out where we came from, and who's slowing us down, and what's the factual evidence as to how fast and where we can move?" "The future belongs to those who see the future." "The key to neurological navigation is to be able to voyage into exactly the circuits of your brain that you want to be exactly when you want to be there and with whom you want to be there." "The key to the Sixties, as we see it now [1979], was a period of self-discovery, of self-indulgence, and the refusal to accept the adult hive over-specialized models." "Show me a taboo and I'm interested in it."

Guest speaker: Claudia Little, BSN, MPH PROGRAM NOTES: Below you will find the list of links to Web sites that Claudia Little refers to in her presentation about the safety, benefits, and importance of the cannabis plant. Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Marijuana – Why it Works Supporting Studies and Articles Growing Acknowledgments from Health Organizations regarding the Medical Benefits of Cannabis Health Organization Endorsements AMA Calls for Scientific Review of Marijuana’s Prohibitive Status How Cannabis Works The Brain’s Own Marijuana (Get link to complete article from Scientific American at this link) Cannabis and the Brain Marijuana Compounds Possess Synergistic Anti-Cancer Effects, Study Says Marijuana Extracts Relieve Intractable Cancer Pain Better than THC, Study Says Books on Specific Conditions Aging, Arthritis, Cancer, Chronic Pain, Gastrointestinal Disorders, HIV/AIDS, Movement Disorders, Multiple Sclerosis (Americans for Safe Access)

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] "The UFO community is just fraught with the most crack-brained, peculiar, self-serving, unstable, mush-minded group of people you would ever hope to get together in one place. I mean it’s like a magnet for screwballs." [Terence then went on, at great length, to describe his own encounter with a UFO . . . go figure  .] "I’ve seen things that violated the laws of physics. I believe the laws of physics can be violated. I believe there may well be extraterrestrials somewhere in the universe." "My technique, which I recommend to you, is don’t believe anything. If you believe in something, you are automatically precluded from believing its opposite. Therefore you have given up a portion of your freedom, and freedom is the dearest thing we’ve got." "Probe the edges." "Psychedelics work. If you think that I’m bullshitting you, go home and take five grams of mushrooms in silent darkness and then we’ll talk. That’s the

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] "I was able to jack it [the strength of the ayahuasca brew] up, and jack it up until finally it was truly horrifyingly strong, and that’s what you want. We’re not interested in colored lights and dancing mice here." "A language which could be seen would be a kind of telepathy. If you could see what I mean you would see my thought. The way we communicate, small mouth noises and the assumption of shared dictionary, an assumption that is never borne out by careful questioning, is a miserable way to communicate." "It’s more an ability locked in your physiological structure that we’re not using. They [the machine elves] want us to speak in colored lights." "I think that the subtext of the governments’ fear about psychedelics is that this quality that they have of dissolving boundaries causes people to question basic assumptions about how society is run. And I think this is true of any society. It isn’t an American p

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] "The surface of things is not where attention should rest." "I’ve never actually seen it [smoked DMT] hit anybody quite as hard as it hit me. For about fifteen minutes all I could say was, ‘I can’t believe it!’ … This is no drug. It’s magic. It masquerades as a drug. It’s a doorway into another world." "We’re a society where people jump out of airplanes on weekends because their lives are so boring and empty. Well then, if you think jumping out of an airplane is a thrill to write home about you should try this stuff. No one would jump out of an airplane if they had DMT on their menu." "I came to feel, and I still sometimes offhandedly refer to it like this, that it [DMT] is secret. It is not a secret. It is THE secret. There is a secret, and this is it. It is the secret that the world is not only not the way you think it is. It’s that the way the world is, is a way that you can’t think it is, because you simply

Guest speaker: Dr. Timothy Leary PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Timothy Leary.] "For the last four or five thousand years, freedom and intelligence and individualism have been moving in an unbroken chain from East to West. So that here on the banks of the Pacific Ocean we obviously have assembled the most advanced nervous systems on the planet." "We all live within the reality bubble that our nervous system projects." "Neurology was the real revolution of the Sixties." "Your theory of evolution determines, really, what kind of a life you’re gonna lead." "The old theory, by old I mean the one they’re still teaching in your colleges, says that new speciation takes tens of millions of years to create a new species. Well if that’s so let’s go back to Quaaludes. Why bother?" "The Sixties was a genetically designed and programmed paedomorphic revolt against adult authority." "I’m sure that most of the people who have felt alienated, I think many of the people who are put in mental hospitals,

Guest speaker: Alan Watts Alan Watts' son sent the following message requesting that his father's talks be removed from the Psychedelic Salon ... bye bye Alan! Mark Watts Said, Lorenzo if you leave the Alan Watts materials up you will be sued before this month is out. Lorenzo, my father’s talks are copyright protected. Please don’t post any more of his talks on your podcast and remove the ones you have in the archive. PROGRAM NOTES: If you want to listen to this talk you will have to pay his son for the privilege.  ... Too bad, I thought information wants to be free. I wonder what Alan would say about this? ... although, if you Google "alan watts mp3 torrent" you can find thousands of Web sites that provide free downloads of Watts material. Also, you will find many hours of free Alan Watts videos on YouTube. ... So maybe it is only the Psychedelic Salon that Mark objects to. PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Alan Watts.] "So we have to think again and try and find out, think deeply, what i

Guest speaker: Lorenzo NOTE: This chapter was revised for the paperback edition that was released in February 2015. Please see the Kindle edition for the current version of this chapter. PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Lorenzo.] "Forget getting a permanent job. Forget careers and the quest for financial stability. They are all false gods, sent to you by the Capitalist elite on Wall Street, whose primary goal is to trap you into a life of servitude." “You still haven’t figured it out yet, have you?” began Shadow. “It should behoove us all to take the words of the Empire’s leaders at face value. They have declared what they call a War on Drugs. Of course, that’s a lie on its face, because they aren’t putting drugs into prison cages, they’re putting people in them. This is no war on drugs, William, this is a war on consciousness, as Richard Glen Boire says. It’s a war on people who aren’t satisfied with the status quo. It is a war on the very people that we are going to need to get us humans out

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: Introduction of Terence McKenna by Timothy Leary, followed by Terence’s talk. [NOTE: The following quotations are by Terence McKenna.] "What’s the hang-up here? What is the problem? Why is perfection so distant?" "Alchemy, as I’m sure many of you know, is really the secret tradition of the redemption of spirit from matter. … The central conception of alchemy is the conception of the philosopher’s stone. What is it? It’s the universal panacea at the end of time. It’s the chocolate cake that your mother made once a week when you were a child. … It’s all things to all men and all women. … It is not a myth or a fairy tale. It is the burning, primary reality, that lies behind the dross of appearances." "We have no idea what it would mean in our own lives if we could throw off the notion of ourselves as fallen beings. We are not fallen beings" "[We] often feel like hapless atoms, running endlessly according to the blueprints and programs of unseen masters, wheth

Guest speakers: Anna Waldstein, Ivan Casselman, and Cameron Adams PROGRAM NOTES: Three lecturers are featured in this session from the 3rd International Conference for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture (ISSRNC) held at the University of Amsterdam 23-26 July 2009. Their presentation is titled "From the Shaman’s Circle to the Ivory Tower: Progress, Spirituality and Psychedelic Thinking." "The suppression of mysticism, psychedelic experience, psychedelic thinking, began roughly two thousand years ago. And you get more intense socio-economic and socio-spiritual hierarchies … until you get to where we are today where there is state control of consciousness as well as state control of production and many other aspects of life." -Anna Waldstein "They’re incredibly good at convincing us that we need a new car, and that new shirt, and the toys for our kids, or whatever, but very good at also convincing us that we don’t need this type of thing any more, this psychedelic thinking. But despite the Powers’ at

Guest speaker: Aldous Huxley PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Aldous Huxley.] I don’t think there are any sinister persons deliberately trying to rob people of their freedom. But I do think, first of all, that there are a number of impersonal forces which are pushing in the direction of less and less freedom, and I also think that there are a number of technological devices which anybody who wishes to use can use to accelerate this process of going away from freedom, of imposing control." "I mean, what I feel very strongly is that we mustn’t be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology. This has happened again and again in history with technology’s advance and this changes social condition, and suddenly people have found themselves in a situation which they didn’t foresee and doing all sorts of things they really didn’t want to do." "That if you want to preserve your power indefinitely, you have to get the consent of the ruled, and this they will do partly by drugs as I foresaw in "B

Guest speaker: Ethan Nadelmann PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Ethan Nadelmann.] "The War on Drugs, this policy of punitive prohibition, is a horror in our society, something that cannot be morally justified, cannot be justified in terms of health, can certainly not be justified in terms of public safety, that cannot be justified in terms of any kind of fiscal prudence that I’ve ever heard of." "The War on Drugs is a cancer in our society, in our American society and in global society." "There’s never been a drug-free society, and there’s never going to be a drug-free society. We are moving increasingly into a world in which there will be ever-more psychoactive drugs available." "The stand-bys, you know, the old faithfuls of tobacco and alcohol and marijuana and coca cocaine and opium, they’ve been with us for thousands of years in one way or another, and they’re going to continue to be part of our society and our lives, whether we like it or not." "When drug treatment gets owned by the cr

Guest speakers: Dr. John Lilly, Laura Huxley, and others PROGRAM NOTES: This podcast begins with a short clip of Alan Watts speaking about human consciousness. Then we join Dr. John Lilly, Laura Huxley, and a few other friends who are discussing the life of Alan Watts a few months after his death in November 1973. Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Alan Watts in Wikipedia List of books by Alan Watts

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] "Your inherited allotment of drug synapses is unique, and this is why some people are sensitive to drugs, some people insensitive, some people extremely sensitive. And one of the things about exploring consciousness with substances is you have to sort of learn what works for you." "If I want a more intense drug experience I take more of one drug." "Low doses of psychedelics, or moderate doses of psychedelics, transform the quality of thought. You think faster, think deeper, think odder, think broader, but you need more for that to burst through into hallucination." Terence McKenna’s ‘Private’ List of Most Influential Books The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins by Dr. Seuss http://astore.amazon.com/matrixmasterscom/detail/039484484X The Art of Seeing by Aldous Huxley http://astore.amazon.com/matrixmasterscom/detail/0916870480 "The world is something to look at, and that attitude in the presence of psychedelics w